Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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On The 20th Of November At Nine In The Morning We Were At Anchor In
The Bay Just Mentioned, Situated Westward Of The Mouth Of The Rio
Capaya.
We found there neither village nor farm, but merely two or
three huts, inhabited by Mestizo fishermen.
Their livid hue, and
the meagre condition of their children, sufficed to remind us that
this spot is one of the most unhealthy of the whole coast. The sea
has so little depth along these shores, that even with the smallest
barks it is impossible to reach the shore without wading through
the water. The forests come down nearly to the beach, which is
covered with thickets of mangroves, avicennias, manchineel-trees,
and that species of suriana which the natives call romero de la
mar.* (* Suriana maritima.) To these thickets, and particularly to
the exhalations of the mangroves, the extreme insalubrity of the
air is attributed here, as in other places in both Indies. On
quitting the boats, and whilst we were yet fifteen or twenty toises
distant from land, we perceived a faint and sickly smell, which
reminded me of that diffused through the galleries of deserted
mines, where the lights begin to be extinguished, and the timber is
covered with flocculent byssus. The temperature of the air rose to
34 degrees, heated by the reverberation from the white sands which
form a line between the mangroves and the great trees of the
forest. As the shore descends with a gentle slope, small tides are
sufficient alternately to cover and uncover the roots and part of
the trunks of the mangroves.
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